


The Light In Your Eyes

by messier51



Series: The Sum of Me (Lich Verse) [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Chickens, Happy Ending, Multi, POV Quentin Coldwater, Ritual Magic, Undead Quentin Coldwater, also possibly an accidental engagement, crack fic with feelings, creative (mis)use of Dungeons and Dragons Lore, fixit fic, hfn, lich Quentin Coldwater, mcd-adjacent because i'm bringing the mc back to life, post 4.13 (The Magicians), qualice, qualiot, queliot, some of each, unbury your queers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 13:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18605395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messier51/pseuds/messier51
Summary: Quentin Coldwater went to his death believing Eliot Waugh didn't love him and wouldn't choose him, so when he watched Eliot offer a peach to the bonfire in his memory, it left him angry and wanting answers. When he stepped through the door in the underworld in his heightened emotional state, he accidentally became a lich.





	The Light In Your Eyes

The first feeling when he saw Eliot walking towards the fire was _relief_. Eliot was okay. It had, in the end, meant something after all. The Monster would never, ever ever be able to corrupt Eliot ever again. He would be safe.

It wasn’t until he stood in front of the door that he thought of the peach. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much, but he almost turned back around to ask Penny about it. But it was over, right? It didn’t matter. They all had stories to tell, stories without Quentin Coldwater involved in them. He might have changed their lives, but at what cost, really?

But that peach. Why was it bugging him? He shouldn’t have anymore regrets, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. That’s what he’d really wanted right? Not magic, not Fillory. Not Alice or even to be the hero. He’d just wanted it all to stop. And yet….

That wasn’t enough _either_.

What did it mean to move on? If Quentin didn’t know where he needed to go, how could a fucking magical door? “Where you need to go” rang too much of the same kind of destiny that failed him in the first place.

And he still didn’t fucking understand why Eliot brought a peach. After everything, after he’d said _no_. After he’d ignored it all, and pretended that nothing had ever happened.

They’d had a _family_.

So Quentin Coldwater walked through the door just a _little_ angrier than he, perhaps, was supposed to have been, and stepped out of a mirror. And he didn’t know what it would take, or what this made him, but he would make sure that Eliot Waugh fucking explained himself.

The lab looked different. Not bad-different, just….glowier. It smelled weird too, like magic and humans and wood and metal. Quentin tried casting a locator spell. Hopefully, he could catch Eliot before he left for Fillory. He was still recovering, so there should be time. Time smelled weird, too, though.

His spell failed. So did all of the subsequent spells he tried to cast. In a moment of frustration, Quentin burst out of the lab and into the hallway--only to realize that he’d broken the door off its hinges in the process.

So, that was new.

Quentin tore through the halls of Brakebills and out through the grounds toward the Physical Kids Cottage. He slowed down before opening the door though, not wanting to cause even more of a disturbance than he already was going to. Very, very gently he turned the handle, and walked through the door.

The common room was dark and quiet. Of course--it was late. They’d probably all gone to bed, if it was even still the same day. It smelled like the same day though. On a second glance, the room was not as empty as it seemed. The people blended in with the furniture, until he focused on them.

Alice and Kady were curled up with an empty bottle of tequila on the floor in front of them. Quentin walked over and took off Alice’s glasses. He folded them--gently--and set them on the table next to her. He grabbed a nearby blanket, tucked it around them both, and picked up the empty bottles.

He knew this was his fault. He’d made them feel like this, no matter how much good he’d done in the process.

Quentin climbed quietly up the stairs. He paused before Eliot’s door with a hand on the doorknob. Everything in him called towards this; break down the door. Demand answers. Get the satisfaction you deserve, that he kept from you.

He leaned his head against the door and smelled paint and wood and the sharp edge of pain. Quentin swallowed, and twisted the knob in his hand.

Eliot slept on the bed, half-undressed and wrapped awkwardly in sheets. Margo was curled up next to him, on top of the covers, in her coat.

Quentin stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them. The little angry voice inside him said _drag him up and take your answers, get what you came for._ It urged him on. _He knows what he did. He knows what he meant. You are owed and you are powerful and you can take it all, everything you were meant to have_.

But Quentin couldn’t move. He was stuck in place, utterly befuddled by the awe he felt, looking at his sleeping friends. The same feeling of regret that he had had downstairs washed over him; he should help Margo into bed. He should tuck Eliot in.

He ignored the voice--it was the easiest thing in the world, it wasn’t even half as convincing as any of the intrusive thoughts he’d ever had in life… in his previous life? had been-- but he was still stuck. It wasn’t until, a moment later, Eliot’s voice reached him and dragged him back into focus that he realized Eliot had woken up, and he could move again.

“Q? Is that… Q, why are your eyes like…are you crying? Q, it’s okay,” Eliot groaned as he sat up slowly, putting a hand to his abdomen. Margo stirred at his feet. “Hey, c’mere,” he said.

Margo looked up, hair in her face, confused.

“HOLY SHITBALLS--El...El why are Quentin’s eyes glowing?”

“My what?”

“HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN STANDING THERE QUENTIN?”

Eliot grimaced, at the volume of Margo’s voice or at the effort of reaching over to her to calm her down, Quentin couldn’t tell, and said, “Shhh, Margo. He’s crying.”

“I can see--El you can’t--he’s--”

“We’ll figure it out. Can you maybe...go get everyone else? But give us a minute.”

“... okay. But if I come back here and he ate your face off, I won’t forgive either of you. You hear that you undead piece of shit? If you hurt Eliot---”

She cut off. He knew. He had already hurt Eliot. He’d died once for that, and neither of them were ever going to get over it. None of them ever could, it was part of them now. He nodded anyway.

He realized, though, he didn’t know how he was standing there. As Margo rearranged her hair, he looked into the mirror over the dresser and saw what she meant--blue, glowing eyes, tracking strange glowing blue tears down his face. Well, that was new.

“Quentin,” Eliot said, softly, once Margo left and closed the door behind her. “Hey, it’s okay. Come over here.” He patted the bed next to him. “I would get up but I had a hard day. I almost died. I’m sure you can understand.”

Honestly, Quentin couldn’t argue with that.

So Quentin sat down on the bed next to Eliot. It felt too soft, like it would swallow him alive. Every voice inside his head said _run_ , except the one demanding answers.

Eliot smelled like medicine and hurt. And hope, and belief. Quentin Coldwater would not have told you, before today, that _love_ had a smell, or a taste, or a sound. Maybe it came with the eyes. He watched Eliot shift himself so that they were facing each other, and was gripped by the same indecision as before: _reach out, take; reach out, ask; sit still, hide; run_.

He could feel the tears on his cheeks, now he knew they were there. Eliot reached across and brushed them away. Simple as that. Quentin reached up to grab Eliot’s hands before he could move them away. _Gentle_ , he reminded himself. Louder than the voice that wanted to grab tightly and demand answers.

“I don’t--” Quentin started, but couldn’t finish.

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re here, somehow, and we’ll work it out. Together.”

Eliot’s hands, held lightly in Quentin’s own, cupped both sides of Quentin’s face and wrapped him in warmth and comfort. Comfort smelled surprisingly similar to Eliot.

“Eliot, I need to know. I _saw you_. Penny was there, he showed me. You were--you were all singing. How? The peach? I have to know. Why?”

Eliot smiled. “Is that why you came all this way? To ask me about a peach?”

“....Yes.”

Eliot was crying, too. That wasn’t right… that couldn’t be right.

Quentin closed his eyes and some of the loudness of the smells, the sounds, the _everything_ calmed down. Quentin’s world narrowed down to the too-soft bed, the comfort-hands, and the thread of _something_ between himself and Eliot. Need? He _needed_ an answer. That seemed right.

Eliot huffed a small laugh. “Without your flashlight eyes it’s actually kinda dark in here. C’mere.” And he tugged Quentin’s head a little. Quentin followed the pull. He let Eliot press his face into Eliot’s shoulder, tucked under Eliot’s chin. He let Eliot leave one hand on the side of his face while he wrapped the other around Quentin’s back, and held him.

“I’m not supposed to be here, am I?”

“You are. You are supposed to be here, you never should have felt like you needed to sacrifice yourself for us or anyone, Q. You didn’t have to do it at Blackspire, and you didn’t have to do it in the mirror realm. We would have found a way.”

“It made me a hero.” But Quentin wasn’t so sure. He should have been, that was the whole point. But he still felt angry, not at peace. “It had meaning. It wasn’t just random bullshit.”

“You never had to sacrifice yourself to be a hero, Q.”

“Alice did. So did you. And Margo, to get her axes. Julia. Everyone else--”

“Q, look at me, please.”

Quentin opened his eyes, and moved away just far enough to look Eliot in the eyes. Eliot’s face was eerie in blue light, but Eliot smiled softly at Quentin despite the tears in his eyes.

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Quentin opened his mouth to ask what that has to do with anything, but before he could, Eliot added, “And I love you.”

“You...what?”

“I love you. Do I need to say it again? Look, I don’t know why you’re here or how, but I really don’t want to question it. I’m probably dreaming, or the mix of alcohol and painkillers is weirdly hallucinatory, but I don’t care. Q. I love you and I promised myself I would tell you. And, fuck.” Eliot sucked in a deep breath of air. “Ow.”

Quentin looked down at Eliot’s stomach, where the axe had cut Eliot open and released the Monster. He could _feel_ it; dead and dying life, yearning to be mended. _Oh_. It couldn’t be that simple, right? And yet--

Quentin drew back from Eliot’s arms and very, very softly covered Eliot’s gaping stomach wound with a hand. He told the voice in his head, _if you want to know so bad, we need to fix this. I need to fix this._

A soft blue glow engulfed his hand, and the room got a little dimmer. As the light suffused into Eliot’s bandaged stomach. Quentin could feel the magic as it traced out the parts of Eliot that had forgotten how to be _Eliot._ Helped them wake up and remember what they were supposed to be, who they were supposed to be. It was as easy as breathing.

And then he passed out.

Quentin woke up to buzzing and comfort and too many voices. Eliot’s hand sat comfortably on Quentin’s thigh and Quentin resisted the urge to grab it. He wasn’t sure which part of him wanted that, anymore, and what it was he wanted to do with it.

“What do you _mean_ he’s a lich?” Penny asked. “That’s not a real thing, you just made that up.”

“No! Liches are real. They can live for a very long time, so they can learn a lot about magic, even though they use it a little differently than magicians do. I talked to a few of them when I was a niffin.”

“Yeah but that doesn’t answer the original question: do we have to like, kill him or something? Liches are evil right?”

“We’re not killing him.” Eliot’s voice was calm, but his grip tightened on Quentin’s thigh. “We’ll figure something else out.”

Quentin felt drained. Whatever he did to Eliot used up all the energy that drove him here.

“He probably isn’t evil. A lich is like, a soul in a body, but not necessarily fully connected to it. It takes a pretty strong emotion during death to jump start the process, so he must have been…” Alice trailed off. Quentin felt the bed shift and he opened his eyes to see Eliot holding a hand out to Alice, to comfort her.

Alice gasped sharply and took a step back when she saw his eyes.

“It’s really you.”

He tried to sit up, but it was a struggle.

“Alice,” he whispered. She dropped herself onto her knees at the edge of the bed to look at him face-to-face. “Hey Vix.”

Alice tilted her head to search Quentin’s face for something. The room smelled like worry and Alice. Alice had some of the same hurt that Eliot was carrying, but also some of her own different sorts. Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t see, because she made that frown and Quentin almost tried to shrink back into Eliot--but he had his eyebrows raised at Quentin too.

Fuck.

The little voice whispered again, _grab him. Make him explain. Get the reasons, find the reasons._ Quentin pretended to let it bother him for a moment while he sat up. Eliot shared a glance with Alice, but didn’t move his hand from Quentin’s thigh. _Huh_ , _okay._

“You’re weak because you have no regulation mechanisms and you just used part of your life force to heal Eliot. You shouldn’t be so careless in the future. If you use it all up, you could become a revenant, or maybe just go completely mad? I’m still not sure which one was on purpose and which was a side effect of how a lich uses magic. They weren’t particularly forthcoming when they explained that part. As much as I’d appreciate the clarification, I don’t think you should try it.”

“Uh-huh.” Quentin nodded.

“Well…?” She asked. She smelled like hope and anticipation. Hunger and fear.

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you going to apologize?” She looked directly at him.

“I...I’m sorry? I--” oh. He thought about Eliot’s hand on his leg. “--I should have woken you up, instead of coming to Eliot first, I’m so--”

“No, _Quentin_. That’s not… no, sorry. What the fuck. How could you do that? We went in there together, and you just made a choice _without me_. I thought you said we were better together?”

 _Oh_. Shit.

“Oh, great, yeah, let’s make the undead monstrosity unhappy, I’m sure that’ll turn out real well,” Penny muttered.

Eliot and Alice both glared at him.

“He’s perfectly stable for now, but we’re going to need a spell from _Trampier’s Rituals_. We should have a copy in the Brakebills Library. Why don’t you go find it?”

“I...why…”

“Because you’re in the way, Twenty-three,” Julia said. “And so are we, I think.” She tugged on Kady’s sleeve and started towards the door.

“Jules, wait--”

“Nope. When you figure this out, we’ll have time to talk.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you lied to, Q.” She smiled at him, and she smelled like mischief and love. She believed in him--but none of them were going to save him.

Margo asked Eliot if he needed anything before following them out, too. “I’m gonna get my stuff packed, I got a kingdom to reclaim.”

Alice sat down onto the bed next to Eliot. Facing both of them he wondered again, just what decision did they come to.

_Run. Run, take what you need, and go. Just do it._

“I don’t want to run away,” Quentin told the voice. Told Alice and Eliot. Told himself.

Quentin looked at the door anyway. He caught sight of his eyes again--less bright overflowing blue now, but still strange in his own otherwise familiar face. The bed was still too soft underneath him. He turned back to face the two people he had cared about most in the world when he died--the two people he cared the most about in the world now.

He could feel that, and he could taste it. He focused in on the sensation of it, and almost got lost in it. Eliot’s touch brought him back, rubbing a small pattern on the top of Quentin’s leg with his thumb.

“Hey, there you are.”

“I--I’m sorry. I keep getting lost in it.” Quentin shook his head. “Alice, I-- you’re right. Of course you’re right. I said we’d do it together.”

“So why didn’t you trust that?”

“I…” He didn’t know.

“Look, I know you wanted me to be safe, but we wanted you to be safe, too.”

“I’m sorry, Alice.”

She nodded. Eliot wrapped his arm around her, and she deflated a little, finally. Hurt, still, if Quentin could trust his senses. He still felt too weak, but this moment was important. He needed to stay in it.

“I--” Quentin didn’t know what else to say. Nothing would ever be enough.

“No, Quentin.” Alice sounded sad, which resonated oddly with every other one of his strange new senses. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be angry. It’s a fucking miracle that you’re back, but when you look at me like that, like. Like you expect me to have all the answers for you. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Oh.”

Alice’s shoulders rose and fell in frustration, and she slipped off the bed, out of Eliot’s comfort. She set a hand on Quentin’s forehead.

“You’re too warm. When they get back with the materials for the ritual, we’ll get you stabilized. I don’t remember all the requirements, but the end result is that you’ll create an...artifact, I guess. Something you need to keep safe, because it’ll anchor your shade in the real world and keep you from drifting off.”

“I still have a shade?”

“Yeah. But it’s different? Kind of like only your shade became a niffin, but not the rest of you.”

“Why does it want me to get something from Eliot?”

“There are a few hypotheses… Q, I don’t know. Something associated with a strong emotion when you pass on, when you’re supposed to be at peace. But you’re not.”

Eliot steadies Quentin on his other side. He’d started crying again, for no reason.

“This is how he was last night--are you sure the ritual will help?” Eliot asked over Quentin’s head, to Alice.

Alice didn’t say anything out loud, but the way Eliot’s hand tightened on his arm, he got the feeling Alice’s answer wasn’t as sure as any of them had hoped.

The others returned with almost all of the necessary materials. As they set chalk marks on the sidewalk outside the cottage, Eliot kept Quentin company on the doorstep.

“You need to pick something to turn into an artifact, Q.”

Quentin smiled. “You know what that is right?”

“Yeah--no. What _what_ is?”

“Alice keeps calling it an artifact, but it’s. It’s D&D, El.” Quentin smiled. “A lich needs a phylactery.”

“W o w.” Eliot watched Quentin with a giant open-mouthed smile. Quentin wondered, for a moment, if he could get what he wanted from Eliot’s mouth.

Eliot had said he loved him. That was real, right?

“Do you think… it’ll change me?”

“Do you want it to?” Eliot asked lightly.

Quentin wasn’t sure. Probably not. “What if I’m never who I was before?”

Eliot looked at Quentin, up and and down. He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a crumpled envelope.

“I don’t think any of us are who we were before, Q. It’s probably okay… I hope it’s in here, they better not have lost… there.” Eliot sorts through a few things in the little package. “Margo finally tracked down our personal items in Fogg’s office. Yours were just your cards, though, and Julia--”

“I know.”

“If you want,” Eliot studied the ring he’d pulled out of the envelope, “I could resize this for you. You could use it as a factorial-whatever.”

“Phylactery.”

“Yeah, that. Gimme your hand?”

“Eliot, that’s your--”

“I know.”

“You can’t just give me your ring, you always wear that.”

“Quentin, shut up for two seconds and give me your hand.” Eliot looked directly into Quentin’s eyes and didn’t flinch, didn’t look afraid. He was afraid but…but not _of Quentin_. Quentin set his hand in Eliot’s without looking away.

Eliot’s hands were cool, and he smiled again as he threaded their fingers together.

“Why aren’t you mad at me, like Alice is?”

“Q, I don’t have time to be mad at you. I’m already late, and life has been literally too short.”

“Are you sure?”

Eliot frowned, then pulled Quentin into his lap by their entangled hands.

“Hey,” Eliot said, when Quentin’s face was close enough to lean their foreheads together.

“Hey?” Quentin’s stomach flipped over. This felt right. _Run_. But he knew the answer. _Danger_. Comfort in Eliot’s arms, love in his heart. Warmth in his touch. He knew all of these things.

When Eliot kissed him, it felt like being whole.

Quentin’s entire existence balanced on the edge of Eliot Waugh.

“I’m sure, Q.” Truth reverberated through Quentin’s bones,

“Oh.”

“I love you.” Eliot looked away, ostensibly to watch the others argue over a sigil. He pulled Quentin’s hand back into his lap, and held onto it. Quentin couldn’t take his eyes off of Eliot.

“ _Oh._ ”

“Yeah, _oh_.” He untwined his fingers from Quentin’s, and set the ring into Quentin’s hand. “So it’s a little selfish of me, but I want you to wear my ring for the rest of your life.”

Eliot executed a series of tuts. He whispered something over the ring, and closed Quentin’s hand around it.

“That should work, try it on.”

The ring sat heavy in Quentin’s hand. He turned it over between his fingers in coin-trick-practiced motions. Instead of putting it on, he licked his lips. He squinted at Eliot.

“I thought when you give someone a ring and ask them to spend the rest of their life with you, that was supposed to be kind of a big deal.”

Eliot finally looked back at him. “I’m not-- ohhhh. Fuck. I kind of am.”

Quentin slipped the ring onto the middle finger of his right hand, the same way Eliot always wore it. It fit perfectly, like it belonged there.

Quentin shifted slightly so that he was leaning just a little against Eliot, and turned to watch the others, like Eliot was doing. Kady was reading lines of text to Julia as she copied them down onto a separate sheet of paper. Penny fed some chickens. Alice was working on calculations to account for ambient power differences, referencing a meter they’d _repurposed_ for the job.

Quentin wasn’t sure what he was supposed to want from Alice.

Eliot slid his arm behind Quentin and said, “She’s mad because she loves you, you know. The two of you will work things out.”

“But…you said…What about ‘proof of concept’?”

“Quentin, I promised myself I’d be brave, not stupid.” Eliot held out his hand, palm up, in Alice’s direction, like an aborted shrug. “She’s the love of your life.”

“Well, yeah. But so are you.” He turned back to watch Eliot’s face shift from soft and unarmed to blank, to confused, to amazed. A single worry raised its ugly head in his gut, though. “We can… give it a shot, right?”

Alice and Julia confirmed the alterations before magically tying each of Penny’s chickens to a node of the chalk circle.

“You ready for this?” Kady asked Quentin.

“I think so? Yes. If Alice says this is what we have to do, I trust her.”

“Q, you still need an artifact,” Julia said.

Eliot responded for him, offering a hand down to pull Quentin up from the steps. “It’s called a _phylactery_.”

Quentin laughed.

“Okay, Q, you stand here,” Alice pulled him into half of an infinity symbol drawn into the center of the chalk circle. It buzzed with latent energy, and he felt uncomfortable standing still. Itchy. _Run, run. Bad._ Alice smiled and adjusted him until he was facing the center of the circle. “The artifact needs to go in the other half, what did you choose?”

He slipped Eliot’s ring off of his finger and handed it to her. Alice took it, and frowned.

“This shouldwork well. Once the spell is done, you’ll want to wear it at all times--if you’re not in contact with your artifact--”

“Phylactery,” Eliot interrupted.

“With your _phylactery_ , you won’t be able to do magic. It’s basically a container for your transformed shade. There are other ways of separating your actual shade from the power in it, or, really, to destroy your shade so that you can do magic without the artifa-phylactery. But we took a vote and decided you’re not allowed to do that.”

“Thanks.”

“The other side effect of this is that you can’t die unless your phylactery gets destroyed. Are you okay with that?”

“I’m--” Quentin didn’t know how to respond. What would it mean, not being able to die? The buzzing feeling grew. _run run runrunRunRunRUNGONOWGO_.

Alice grabbed Quentin’s left hand, the one he’d handed her the ring with. On his right side, Eliot slid their hands together, entwining his fingers between Quentin’s. _Here_ , their touches said. _Stay._

“It’s going to be fine. We’ll…. Figure it out together. Once we sort you out.”

Eliot started to pull away, but Quentin gripped his hand tighter. He pulled Alice in closer too, and kissed her.

“I trust you.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry, we can’t stay in here with you. You need to stay here, inside this loop. You understand?”

Quentin nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Alice backed up, letting go of Quentin’s hand. She set Eliot’s ring in the other loop of the lemniscate, and left the circle.

“Q, you need to let go of my hand now,” Eliot murmured into Quentin’s ear.

“I--okay. No, wait.”

Eliot turned back to Quentin, with a frown in his brow. Quentin kissed him too.

“Okay.”

Alice and Julia took up positions on the north and south sides of the circle, to Quentin’s left and right. He shut his eyes and tried to shake out the feeling of _badwrong_.

“You better not fuck this up, Q.”

“What?”

When Quentin opened his eyes, Eliot was standing on the west side of the circle, across from him. Eliot raised an eyebrow.

“Your lich ritual. _Lichual_.”

Quentin squinted at Eliot. He wanted to say something, but no response came to mind that could possibly answer that.

“Okay, Q, just, focus on Eliot. Both of you shut up though.” Alice and Julia intoned the first stanza of a chant in Sumerian.

Quentin kept his eyes on Eliot. Eliot thought for a minute, and then shrugged off his coat. He started, very slowly, unbuttoning his shirt, without breaking eye contact with Quentin.

 _“What?”_ Quentin mouthed at him.

Eliot put a finger to his mouth and shook his head.

The inside of Quentin started to burn, but he couldn't look away from Eliot. Eliot, who was slowly performing a strip tease on the lawn on a chilly overcast morning.

Eliot was toying with the buttons on his pants when the hook of the spell dragged Quentin’s soul, his shade, whatever it had become, out of him.

Six chickens disappeared in a pop of ozone.

A magical blue-glowing miasma swirled around Quentin in the small loop he stood in before transferring at the centerpoint of the infinity symbol into the other loop. It orbited above Eliot’s-- _Quentin’s_ ring.

Eliot had stopped playing around, and took a step towards the circle. He stopped himself, but left his hands raised in front of him, unable to do anything. Unable to come towards Quentin.

Quentin was empty.

His eyes left Eliot.

It didn’t hurt anymore, and he didn’t have to run, but he also didn’t have to stay put.

Except--he remembered--he did. He’d promised. They’d do it together, him. Alice. Eliot. And he knew this feeling, and it wouldn’t stay like this forever. Even if it felt like it right now. He could choose to stay, even if it didn’t feel like he had a good reason to. He would find it again.

Quentin stood still, and looked back into Eliot’s eyes. He didn’t watch as the ring absorbed a cloud of blue. He didn’t listen to the chanting. He just watched Eliot, and remembered.

He’d come back because he had been so mad about a stupid peach. He’d told himself that he didn’t know why Eliot would offer a peach in his memory--but that wasn’t true. He knew, and he didn’t have to figure out why. Not even missing his shade would take that away. He could trust that, just like he could trust Alice’s clear voice, and his other friends’ steady presence.

When the last of the blue glow faded into the ring and Alice and Julia’s voices fell silent, Quentin passed out again.

Quentin woke up enveloped in Eliot’s arms, and even though everything hurt, it wasn’t really so bad. He adjusted himself, settling slightly deeper into Eliot’s embrace. Eliot responded by pulling him in closer and nuzzling the back of Quentin’s neck with his chilly nose.

“Cold.” It came out as a whine, and Quentin squirmed, but Eliot just held him closer.

“Q,” Eliot turned Quentin’s name into a song.

Quentin’s hands found both of Eliot’s and he slotted his fingers between Eliot’s. Someone had put the ring back onto his hand, and when it touched Eliot’s bare skin he could _feel_ Eliot’s comfort and love again. He hadn’t realized how much the strange sensations had gone away with the ritual, but he had time to figure it all out.

Quentin twisted himself around in Eliot’s grip to face Eliot.

“What are you doing in bed with me?”

“Alice asked me to keep an eye on you. This might be a surprise, but I didn’t get much sleep last night. When the walking dead show up, it’s hard to go back to bed.”

“Technically, the walking dead were--what. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Your eyes are--”

“Still weird?”

“--beautiful.”

 _Truth_ , resounded through his skin through the place where Quentin’s ring rested against Eliot’s chest. _Love, want, need,_ and _fear_ rattled around underneath it. He took his hand off of Eliot, because it felt like an invasion.

“Too much?”

“No, I’m just not quite used to the lich magic yet.” Quentin’s hand was heavy with the ring--with his soul, he realized. “You know, I’m not an expert at this sort of thing, but I think you should probably kiss me now.”

Eliot pushed himself up onto his elbows.

“I think I can do that.”

Quentin pressed himself up into Eliot’s mouth and let the feeling carry him. Everything would be okay, and he finally, truly believed that.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/sourcerer_aj/status/1120458819786743808) as a response to Gigi's tweet: '"Friendly" Reminder: Quentin Makepeace Coldwater went to his grave believing Eliot Waugh didn't love him and wouldn't choose him.' I did not think there was anything friendly about it, and went about fixing that. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left nice comments as I wrote it, and ignored all my weird tense switches. Special thanks to Captain Hopps for all the editing suggestions! 
> 
> Extra Lore Fact: The chickens used in the ritual were not harmed. They were sent into the seam where the Monster adopted them. He takes care of them and they provide him the love and adoration he has always wanted. They have no coop so they sleep in a pile on top of him, and they're all very happy. ([read more](https://twitter.com/coldwaughtersq/status/1121339036809953282))
> 
> There's going to be an epilogue with more qualiot because I want more of it (and I told Gigi I would) but the Q/Eliot scene to close it out was nice and symmetrical with the way the fic started.


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